Questions related to Facebook instant games lifecycle

[pingu]

Hello

Here is how I plan to implement my game:

1. game starts (from somewhere, either by search on Messenger or a friend inviting on Messenger, or a group share)

2. Player plays one round and dies

3. Player is shown a dialog to invite his friends (through FBInstant.chooseAsync())

4. Player chooses one of her friends and comes back to the game. Q: Does her friend immediately receive an invite?

5. Player makes a high score. I call "FBInstant.updateAsync()" with her high score and some text and image (RICH_GAMEPLAY update). Q: Who does this message go to? I can't choose any recipient when I send this, so who does it send it to?

Q: What is the difference between "shareAsync" and "updateAsync"?

Q: Does it matter where the player started playing the game from? Whether it was from a friend's invite or from a Facebook post share? Which steps above would it affect?

Thank you

 

[Noel]

Hi,
4. Yes, it is sent immediately
5. It is sent to the current context (could be a 1:1 conversation or a group conversation)
6. It is well documented: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games/instant-games/sdk/fbinstant6.2, https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games/instant-games/rich-gameplay-features and https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games/instant-games/best-practices. I do not think I can put better words on it than the documentation itself.

7. Not really. But when you enter from a custom update for example, as it contains data (getEntryPointData), you can resume a game where it was and other things.

I hope that helped.

[pingu]

Hi @Noel

Thanks for the reply. Let me write down my findings so it can help others.

shareAsync() is used to share an image / text to a new context (the user gets to choose).

updateAsync() will always share to the current context (without the user getting to choose). This means that if the game doesn't have a context (maybe because chooseAsync() was never called in the first place) it won't do anything.

 

Quote

4. Yes, it is sent immediately

This is not quite correct I think. chooseAsync() only sets the context. Only after calling updateAsync() will the actual messages get sent.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

Another question I have is, how do I debug FBInstant code? For example, for me, updateAsync() is simply not sending any message even after I make thep player choose the context. How do I debug this?

I created the custom template, I put the correct object with base64 image, template reference, text, etc. but it just won't send the message  

Thanks

[pingu]

To answer my own question, it is possible to debug FB instant games on the desktop browser using browser developer tools and console.log 

 

[Noel]

Hi @pingu, it looks like you do not need me anymore  Let me know if you have other questions.